The animated film: a learning tool

Return on some historical elements of the technique image by image and presentation of the applications allowing the pupils to produce their own short film in the school environment.

By Guillaume Bilodeau, IT resource teacher

Although the climate issue was at the center of the last federal elections, it is not yesterday that people are mobilizing for the protection of their environment. Indeed, Frédéric Back, at the beginning of the seventies, was already aware of the degradation of aquatic environments during the construction of the Expo 67 site. His observation led him to use his talent as a designer to raise awareness among people to the impacts of pollution, by illustrating the issues associated with it.

In addition, he participated in the revitalization of the banks of the St. Lawrence River by planting trees there. Twenty years later, his film, The man who planted trees, was born and won the Oscar for best animated film. To achieve this work, he produced more than 20,000 drawings and devoted five years of his life to it in an animation studio located in the facilities of Radio-Canada. Unfortunately, in 1993, following major budget cuts, this place of creation closed its doors.

Create short films in schools

Fortunately, the National Film Board (ONF), for its part, continued its activities and was thus able to help several artists to make their animated films and, at the same time, to transmit their messages. In addition, the ONF has developed a very interesting application, ONF StopMo Studio, which, today, allows students to produce their own short film in their schools. In 2014, it won the award for the best application from the Apple Store in Canada and was honored at the Boomerang gala, which annually recognizes excellence in the field of digital technologies.

There is also another worthy app: Easy Studio. From geometric shapes, the student can create an animated work using the image by image technique. Over the next year, short films will be released in the schools of the Montreal School Board as part of a science, French or visual arts course.

These beautiful artistic initiatives will allow both the teacher and the learner to exploit the potential of digital for learning and to demonstrate digital creativity, two of the twelve dimensions of the Reference framework for digital competence presented last April by Minister Roberge.

If you would like to further explore the various techniques associated with animated film with your students, take the time to download the app. The McLaren Workshop.

Some examples of projects carried out by students using the image-by-image technique :

Carrefour education offers you a free application that allows you to easily create films using the stop motion technique: " Animation in volume ".